Baylor was a gifted shooter, strong rebounder, and an accomplished passer. Renowned for his
acrobatic maneuvers on the court, Baylor regularly dazzled Lakers
fans with his trademark hanging jump shots. The No. 1 draft pick
in 1958, NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959, and an 11-time NBA
All-Star, he is regarded as one of the game's all-time greatest
players.[1]
In 1977, Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall
of Fame.[2]

Baylor spent twenty-two years as GM of the Los Angeles Clippers,
being named the NBA Executive of the Year in 2006, before being
relieved of his duties slightly before the 2008-09 season
began.[3]

Contents

Early life in
D.C.

Elgin "Rabbit" Baylor had two basketball playing brothers, Sal
and Kermit. After stints at Southwest Boys Club and Brown Jr. High,
Baylor was a 3 time All City player in High School. Elgin played
his first 2 years at Phelps in the '51 and '52 basketball seasons
where he set his first area scoring record of 44 points vs Cardozo.
During his 2 All City years at Phelps he averaged 18.5 and 27.6
points per season. He did not perform well academically and dropped
out of school ('52-'53) to work in a furniture store and to play
basketball in the local recreational leagues. Baylor reappeared for
the '54 season playing for the newly opened Spingarn High School
and the 6'5, 190 lb senior was named 1st team All Met and won
the SSA's Livingstone Trophy as the Area's Best Basketball player
for 1954. He finished with a 36.1 average for his 8 Interhigh
Division II league games. On Feb 3, 1954 in a game against his old
Phelps team, he scored 31 in the first half. Playing with 4 fouls
the entire second half, Baylor scored 32 more points to establish a
new DC area record with 63 points. This broke the point record of
52 that Western's Jim Wexler had set the year before..... when he
broke Rabbit's record of 44 .

College
career

An inadequate scholastic record kept him out of college until a
friend arranged a scholarship at the College of Idaho, where he was
expected to play basketball and football. After one season, the
school dismissed the head basketball coach and restricted the
scholarships. A Seattle car dealer interested Baylor in Seattle
University, and Baylor sat out a year to play for Westside
Ford, an AAU team in Seattle, while establishing eligibility at
Seattle.

In his three collegiate seasons, one at Idaho and two at
Seattle, Baylor averaged 31.3 points per game. Baylor is a member
of Kappa Alpha
Psi fraternity.

NBA
player

The Minneapolis Lakers used the No. 1 overall pick in the 1958
NBA Draft to select Baylor, then convinced him to skip his senior
year at SU and instead join the pro ranks. The team, several years
removed from its glory days of George Mikan, was in trouble on the
court and at the gate. The year prior to Baylor's arrival the
Lakers finished 19-53 with a squad that was slow, bulky and aging.
Baylor, whom the Lakers signed to play for $20,000 per year (a
great amount of money at the time), was the franchise's last shot
at survival.

With his superb athletic talents and all-round game, Baylor was
seen as the kind of player who could save a franchise, and he did.
According to Minneapolis Lakers owner Bob Short in a 1971 interview
with the Los Angeles Times: "If he had turned me down then, I would
have been out of business. The club would have gone bankrupt."

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Rookie of the
Year

As a rookie in 1958-59, Baylor finished fourth in the league in
scoring (
24.9 points per game), third in rebounding (
15.0 rebounds per game), and eighth in assists (4.1 assists per
game). He registered 55 points in a single game, then the
third-highest mark in league history behind Joe Fulks's 63 and
Mikan's 61. Baylor won the NBA Rookie of the Year
Award and led the Lakers from last place the previous year to
the NBA finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics in the first
four game sweep in finals history. Thus began the greatest rivalry
in the history of the NBA. During his career, Baylor helped lead
the Lakers to the NBA Finals seven more times.

Baylor began to be hampered with knee problems during the
1963-64 season. The problems culminated in a severe knee injury,
suffered during the 1965 Western Division playoffs. Baylor, while
still a very powerful force, was never quite the same, never again
averaging above 30 points per game.

Retirement

Baylor finally retired nine games into the 1971-72 season because of his nagging knee
problems. His retirement resulted in two great ironies. First, the
Lakers' next game after his retirement was the first of an NBA
record of 33 consecutive wins.[4]
Second, the Lakers went on to win the NBA Championship that season,
something that Baylor never achieved.

Career
Achievements

Baylor was the last of the great undersized forwards in a league
where many guards are now his size or bigger. He finished his
playing days with 23,149 points, 3,650 assists and 11,463 rebounds
over 846 games. His signature running bank shot, which he was able
to release quickly and effectively over taller players, let him to
numerous NBA scoring records, several of which still stand.

The 71 points Baylor scored on November 15, 1960 was a record at
the time. The 61 points he scored in game 5 of the NBA Finals in
1962 is still an NBA Finals record. An underrated rebounder, Baylor
averaged 13.5 rebounds per game during his career, including a
sterling 19.8 rebounds per game during the 1960-61 season — a
season average exceeded by only five other players in NBA
history—all of whom were 6'-9" or taller.

A 10-time All-NBA First Team selection and 11-time NBA
All-Star, Baylor was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in
1977. He was named to the NBA 35th Anniversary All-Time Team in
1980 and the NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1996. in 2003,
SLAM
Magazine ranked him number 11 among its Top 75 NBA players
of all time.

NBA
Coach and Executive

In 1974, Baylor was hired to be an assistant coach and later the
head coach for the New
Orleans Jazz, but had a lackluster 86-135 record and retired
following the 1978-79 season.
In 1986, Baylor was hired by the Los Angeles Clippers as the team's
vice president of basketball operations. He stayed in that capacity
for 22 years before resigning in October 2008 at the age of 74.
During his tenure, the Clippers managed only two winning seasons
and amassed a won loss record of 607 and 1153. They also won only
one playoff series during this time.

In February 2009, Baylor filed an employment discrimination
lawsuit against the Clippers, team owner Donald Sterling, and the NBA. He
alleges that he was underpaid during his tenure with the team and
then fired because of his age and race.[5]

Baylor was selected as the NBA Executive of the Year in 2006.
That year the Clippers won their first playoff series since 1976,
when the franchise was located in Buffalo, New York and named the Buffalo Braves.

NBA
highlights

NBA Rookie of the Year (1959)

All-NBA First Team 10 times (1959-65, 67-69)

Eleven-time NBA All-Star (1959-65, 1967-70)

NBA All-Star Game Co-MVP (1959)

Holds NBA Finals single-game record for most points (61) on
April 14, 1962 against the Boston Celtics

Scored 71 points (8th highest in history) against the New York
Knicks (Nov. 15, 1960)

Scored 23,149 points in only 846 games (27.4 points per game,
fourth best all-time) and averaged 30 points or more three times
(1961-63)

Retired as NBA's third all-time leading scorer

Retired as fifth leading scorer in All-Star Game history (19.8
points per game)

Ranked sixth in NBA Finals all-time scoring (26.4 in 44
games)

Ranked seventh in NBA playoffs all-time scoring (27.0 in 134
games)

NBA 35th Anniversary Team (1980)

NBA 50th Anniversary Teams (1996)

NBA Executive of the Year (2006)

Quotes

"He was one of the most spectacular shooters the game has ever
known", Baylor's longtime teammate Jerry West told HOOP magazine in
1992. "I hear people talking about forwards today and I haven't
seen many that can compare with him."

Bill Sharman
played against Baylor and coached him in his final years with the
Lakers. "I say without reservation that Elgin Baylor is the
greatest cornerman who ever played pro basketball", he told the Los
Angeles Times at Baylor's retirement in 1971.

Tommy Hawkins, Baylor's teammate for six seasons and opponent
for four (and later a basketball broadcaster) declared to the San
Francisco Examiner that "pound for pound, no one was ever as great
as Elgin Baylor." "Elgin certainly didn't jump as high as Michael
Jordan", Hawkins told the San Francisco Examiner. "But he had the
greatest variety of shots of anyone. He would take it in and hang
and shoot from all these angles. Put spin on the ball. Elgin had
incredible strength. He could post up Bill Russell. He could pass
like Magic [Johnson] and dribble with the best guards in the
league."